Video Flashback: Black Sabbath - "Trashed"

Of Black Sabbath's many albums, I can easily say -- though this is still supposed by many to be anathema -- that Born Again was early on and still remains one of my favorites.  Ian Gillan's collaboration with the band was short-lived and, from his description, ill-fated.  But, that period produced some excellently playful, grit-guitar heavy, imaginative songs that, for me, ought to be Sabbath standards:  Digital Bitch, Hot Line, Disturbing the Priest -- and of course one of the heaviest metal songs ever composed, Zero the Hero.  The entire album -- panned by many at the time -- has really stood the test of decades.  The songs have aged well without becoming dated and faded.  And, this holds as well for the opening track, Trashed.

I didn't actually get to see this early-MTV era video for the tune until just a few years ago.  I bought Born Again as an album, and played it enough times to wear the record down quite a bit, back in 1984, along with a trove of 8 or 9 other Metal LPs through the gimmicky Columbia Record Club  (effectively tripling the size of my metal record collection!), so Trashed early on became one of those songs permanently burnt into the figurative mp3s of my own wetware memory.  It's quite interesting to watch this video -- or rather the two videos, as you'll see below -- looking back retrospectively from the vantage point of several decades.

"Define" Heavy Metal, You Say?

You'll notice that, at first, it looks like I've placed the quotation marks in the wrong places in the title of this entry.  But, no. . .  they're set around just the right term -- define.  You'll see, or rather read, why momentarily.  First though, a bit of back-story.

I would say that one of the words I hear most often from non-philosophers in early-on conversations with philosophers, almost always placed in the interrogative is "define," as in "now, how would you define. . . ?" or "what's your definition of . . . ?" or "can you define. . . .?"  Occasionally, most often I'd say in student papers, I end up seeing the indicative ". . .  is defined as . . .  according to the . . . .   dictionary/encyclopedia/my uncle Jake, etc."

I don't hear "definition" pop up all that often when philosophers are plying their trade, teaching, or talking amongst themselves.  Why is that, you might wonder?  Well, although we hale from a profession and tradition that gets a good early start with Socrates wandering around asking people for definitions of key concepts, like virtue, justice, knowledge, and so on. . .  most of us have come to realize -- one way or another -- just how difficult it can be to provide adequate definitions for any really interesting concept, experience, phenomenon.  "Give me a definition of. . . "  You demand that in many philosophical circles, and they rightly peg you as right off the bus, really or just ironically naive, or as playing at debater's tricks

Inaugural Post: A New (but Old) Metal Renaissance

This new blog represents a project that those who know me well also know I've long been thinking about -- and talking about -- a forum where elements from my public and professional persona and my more private passions can be brought together, juxtaposed, integrated.  More than half my life at this point, I've worked as a philosopher.  And, nearly all of my life, I've been a metalhead.

Until now, with exceptions of a few posts in my main blog, Orexis Dianoētikē -- where I've reflected on heavy metal music in terms of memory, affectivity, temporality -- I've maintained separation between these two equally vital, similarly important spheres.  But today -- which marks my 43rd birthday -- I'm embarking upon something novel for me as a public philosopher, bringing my longstanding love for heavy metal out of the shadows, away from the periphery, and into the limelight, onto the stage.  I've decided that I need a place to write down -- and work out further -- thoughts, reflections, realizations, puzzles and paradoxes that I've partly and privately shared with friends, family, colleagues -- and with my wife and partner, in whom I'm fortunate enough to find someone who enjoys both classic metal and philosophy as passionately as I do.